The ideal green sound barrier?

[beatty]

Hi,

I've just moved onto a fantastic half-acre outside Auckland. It's a lovely section with several mature fruit trees, a creek and a lovely patch of healthy native kiwi bush. The compromise for all this wonderfulness is close proximity of my house to a reasonably busy road.
I'd like to plant something to block as much of the road noise as possible and am looking for suggestions as to the ideal living sound barrier. I have limited space that I can use, say 1-1.5 metres, at ground level, but heaps more space above chest hight.
I'm currently thinking some strain of bamboo, but have been warned by several people that if I use the wrong strain I'll wind up with sharp suckers all over the rest of the yard and a mission to keep it contained.
There are several relatively mature trees already facing the road, however they do very little to block the noise.
Is bamboo the right way to go? Other suggestions?

Thanks for your help.
Cheers,
Beatty

[Jez]

G'day Beatty, welcome to the forum.

Firstly, congratulations on your new property, sounds like you have a nice headstart in making it a great place.

There is an old thread on this topic somewhere I seem to recall which you may like to check out.

As you've already noted, mature trees are great for privacy, shade, windbreak, pollution screen etc, but not that effective for blocking out road noise.

Ideally you could create an earthmound across the front of your property - that is much more effective for noise than a living fence - but from the sounds of things you may not have enough space to make that practical.

Bamboo may well serve better than what you currently have, but you may be disappointed by the fact it doesn't screen out as much noise as you'd hoped. FWIW, there are clumping varieties of bamboo which don't sucker - Bambusa multiplex (Fern leaf bamboo) is one variety I can think of offhand which grows to 3-4 metres and is not invasive...others may have further suggestions for an appropriate species, or you could check out the factsheets at this (click) site...not NZ based but may give you a good guide.

[spritegal]

Greetings

Perhaps I can help with the previous thread on acoustic sound barriers.

Trees are very poor acoustic sound barriers. You need acres and acres of them, densely planted, to reduce noise. In all honesty a lot of trees may provide "white noise" when they move in the wind which will attenuate the effect of road traffic, but just by relative density and acoustic reflectivity compared to say a high colorbond fence, they are pretty useless.

Noise is a bit like wind. If you have a gap in your fence, the noise will flow through it. If you think of noise as you think of wind it makes sense to construct a SOLID barrier (earth bund is good, or a high wooden or steel fence, if you can afford it). There are a whole lot of calculations you need to do to define the height and width of any acoustic structure for it to be successful. If you PM me I can give you further details.

[hedwig]

plants won't help a lot but a fence. There should be no gap the noise wll find it, and it should be either of two leightweight materials whith diffenrent frequences or perhaps easier of one heavy material. There are charts to calculate the right hight.

[MelMel8318]

A cheap fence with creeping crawling plants is what we used at one of our properties. It is not as dense as an earth mound, but doesn't have the gaps of trees and bamboo.

[Pakanohida]

Bamboo. It leaves no gaps, drought tolerant, and there are variable heights, textures, and colors to choose from. There are also variations on the type of culm or area between nodes on the stalk of bamboo. Just make sure of the type since there are 2, clumping and spreading. In your particular application you want clumping, not spreading. Spreading will take over unless it has a 1 meter barrier that also sticks up 6" out of the ground to stop rhizomes from spreading.

[Nickolas]

i would use both Paulownia and or tagasaste trees, the only bad point i can see with using paulownia trees on there own as a living sound barrier is that they are deciduous.

Here is a good website on using clumping bamboo as sound barrier: http://www.bamboogarden.com/bamboo_s...and_hedges.htm

[Pakanohida]

i would use both Paulownia and or tagasaste trees, the only bad point i can see with using paulownia trees on there own as a living sound barrier is that they are deciduous.

Here is a good website on using clumping bamboo as sound barrier: http://www.bamboogarden.com/bamboo_s...and_hedges.htm

I have many deciduous trees (Alders) mixed in with my Myrtlewood and Port Orford cedar trees, and it is always nosier in winter when the leaves drop in fall.

[garnede]

An earth mound with a fence on top with vines growing over the fence is the most effective solution.

[Grasshopper]

Create a pleasing productive sound that will dull the ugly one, a wind turbine,an aquaponics set up,chatty animals or a pond and fountain,music.